How long would it take to travel 4rm earth across the universe nd back home eart

@joseph_v (212)
India
December 23, 2006 7:19am CST
How long would it take to travel from earth across the universe and back home to earth again? Assuming that space is curved, and that no-thing exists outside of space, and that there is no 'outside' space, then if one travelled in a straight line from this planet in any direction, presumably at some point one should return to earth. So, if one left earth in a starship travelling at the speed of light in a straight line how long would the journey take? And, if at the speed of light time passes slower than on earth, then how much younger would you be than a person of identical age as you, that had stayed on earth?
2 people like this
19 responses
@jen20619 (1300)
• Ireland
24 Dec 06
So many interesting questions there.Do you have the answers to these Id love a follow up with the answers .Could you do that for me please?Where did you hear about them?
@abhisree (520)
• India
24 Dec 06
am sorry but i cant seem to make the head and tail out of it!!:)
@polachicago (18716)
• United States
24 Dec 06
Travel to different universes via so-called "wormholes" might become possible, if (and a big IF!) you could survive the extreme gravity inside the hole. You can travel forever and stay forever young. We get older only on planets, because of gravity. That means you can be forever young, live forever and never finish you jurney.
@bogdyyyyy (380)
• Romania
24 Dec 06
you can imagine because physicali its imposible an it will take 999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 years
@shaf732 (85)
• Singapore
24 Dec 06
My ponit of view, it depends on what type of travelling source you take, if airplane of course , may be few months.This earth is very big, there are different weathers.
@vabh4u (610)
• India
24 Dec 06
just one swt dream.....
@moneymind (10510)
• Philippines
24 Dec 06
that depends on your assumed size of the universe, what you only assumed is the shape of the universe you did not include the size of it. one needs to assume the size of the universe before one can take an assumed calculations about your question. greetings. : )
@vipul20044 (5794)
• India
23 Dec 06
Buddy if you travel in space with light speed it will be less for you there But if you compare it with the earth say it is 2 years for you there then it will be much more on earth so it depends
• India
23 Dec 06
u tell me the dimention of universe and i will tell u the how much it will take to complete the journey
@loudcry (1043)
• India
24 Dec 06
Theoratically the person who has travelled in space should be younger than the person staying on earth. How long will it take to travel acroos the univ? To answer this question one needs to know the extent of the univ.
• Egypt
24 Dec 06
we do not know the size of the universe,and i think we will never know.so how can anyone give a calculation for uknown items,will not be reasonable,and about my thoughts,i believe that no one will ca accomplish that task (at least at the present time)so it need many lives to spend over there.
@kyle930 (763)
• United States
23 Dec 06
NO one can answer the question exactly because there is no way of knowing how large the universe is yet. I can however tell you that you would not be able to complete the journy in your lifetime.
@unus49 (118)
• India
24 Dec 06
dear it il depend on ur speed!!!!
@abhax123 (1695)
• India
24 Dec 06
Lets solve it mathematically... let us assume Complete circle of universe from earth and back to earth = INFINITE Speed of our space craft = One light year time taken from one complete circle=Distance / Speed = infinte / one light year = infinite and about been younger that i really dun know!!!
• India
23 Dec 06
if we knew how big the universe was ..then possibly we could have answered that question..as regards travelling at the spped of light is concerned ..i'm afraid that's too slow as their are thousands of stars which are hundreds of light years away..so u decide...
• India
23 Dec 06
universe is a very big place buddy, you make me think of einstein's words-- two things are infinite one is universe and the other is human stupidity
@smbilalshah (1316)
• Pakistan
23 Dec 06
for answering that u need to know atleast the distance ull be travelling n that my friend is unknown yet secondly im not an expert on relativity but who knows maybe u go into some type of warp drive that flings u forward faster than expected and then ucover this all distance a lot earlier than expected but still 1 things for sure u wont be alive for that long no matter what itll take u atleast a couple of billion yrs another way to travel will be of traveling through a worm hole u enter a black hole at a precise moment when the worm hole is open n then u come out from a white hole ...who knows where maybe in some other didtant part of the universe or maybe even into a parallel universe
• India
23 Dec 06
dunno
• Canada
23 Dec 06
The closest galaxy is the recently discovered Canis Major dwarf galaxy, which is "only" 25,000 light-years away. So it would take 25,000 years to get there if you traveled at the speed of light. Actually, that's the amount of time it would take from the perspective of the outside world. From the perspective of a traveler moving at the speed of light, it would appear to take no time at all. That's because of relativistic "time dilation" THE INTRIGUING notion that time might run backwards when the Universe collapses has run into difficulties. Raymond Laflamme, of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, has carried out a new calculation which suggests that the Universe cannot start out uniform, go through a cycle of expansion and collapse, and end up in a uniform state. It could start out disordered, expand, and then collapse back into disorder. But, since the COBE data show that our Universe was born in a smooth and uniform state, this symmetric possibility cannot be applied to the real Universe. Physicists have long puzzled over the fact that two distinct "arrows of time" both point in the same direction. In the everyday world, things wear out -- cups fall from tables and break, but broken cups never re- assemble themselves spontaneously. In the expanding Universe at large, the future is the direction of time in which galaxies are further apart. Many years ago, Thomas Gold suggested that these two arrows might be linked. That would mean that if and when the expansion of the Universe were to reverse, then the everyday arrow of time would also reverse, with broken cups re-assembling themselves. More recently, these ideas have been extended into quantum physics. There, the arrow of time is linked to the so-called "collapse of the wave function", which happens, for example, when an electron wave moving through a TV tube collapses into a point particle on the screen of the TV. Some researchers have tried to make the quantum description of reality symmetric in time, by including both the original state of the system (the TV tube before the electron passes through) and the final state (the TV tube after the electron has passed through) in one mathematical description.